Pay It Forward
by Iwilo
Summary: Brekk ain't into the funny stuff.


I am parched. There are better words than that, but I'm too thirsty to think of any. I don't think I could cry if I wanted to now. I might want to, were I not so dry and weary.

Parched, the word keeps whispering through my mind. And it sounds like the dry desert sand that is inevitably swirling just outside the gates of Orgrimmar. I'm within the gates, bodily. I've propped myself against a stone wall; if Orgimmar is nothing else, it is stone walls, and the wind that swirls the sand swirls my hair. My hair is the color of sand, long and dry.

It whips across my face and I do nothing to remedy that, for, you see, it is right.

If you've seen the way a tumbling weed will bounce across the cracked earth, to be suddenly caught up in the reversed crotch of a green-gray saguaro… If you've stood there and watched until you've realized that the tumbling weed will fall or not fall, and that it is right either way; you will know what I mean when I say this: My hair is whipping my face and it is right. Parched has something, has _everything_ to do with this.

You may wait for the weed to tumble or not. I may wait for my hair to stop whipping my face. I wait. Perhaps it will stop or perhaps it will whip the dry leather of my face to dust.

_Paaaaaarched_. Never has a hiss been so welcoming, inviting. It's the sound of _true _rest, inviting; the allure of the sun and wind that will grind the stone walls of Orgrimmar into sand. My bones are parched and they will be dust, one day. It is inevitable and so it is right. I wait.

I wait and I listen to the whisper of the sand and even after my hair stops whipping and the wind dies down, the sand still whispers. _Paaarched_. Again and again, it speaks. I listen to it and make all sorts of sense of the one word with my fevered mind. I watch my cracked, dry hands twitch in my lap, from beneath the frayed curtain of my once-lustrous hair. _Paaaarched_. It seems imperative, then that I filter out any thought or translation and hear only the voice of Parched, my new God. What does Parched want?

I hold my breath, focus. _I am here, power and providence. Tell me what it is that you would have._ My chest heaves against my closed throat, but my Lord does not speak. My eyes tick back and forth in my skull as I stare at my once-pink and slender hands. Hands are dry and gnarled, dehydration causing the veins to stand out. They look so old. Please, I do not want to die. Not like this. I have so much time. Time is as nothing to Parched.

I breathe in. …_Paaaaarched_.

I could cry, but I can not because I am parched. Parched holds me in whispery, sandy-skeletal fingers. Please don't leave me again. I have nothing else to hold on to and I was starting to feel the pain and fear of my imminent death. Leave me to my last hours of insanity. Do not let the daemon of regret touch my ear. I fear that daemon, it is close. I have heard its distant, amused squeal. Fill my mind with sand.

Be my god. I am your servant.

_Paaaaarched_. Speak to me; yes speak to me, my Lord! Tell me what you would have of me.

My eyes are giant, dry stones, bulging from the sockets and rough as they stare down at the twisted, bumpy claws that will be dust. My hair whips again and it strikes me eye and it is tacky, somehow. Not as dry as the stone I was sure it was. Parched has returned and it has brought rightness that is rapidly dissolving the regret… Regret; it is the damp, dark daemon that would soak these hands and make them rot. NO! I want to be sand and burning sunlight and bone dust. Please, my god, keep me. My eye is not dry enough.

_Paaaarched_…

My adoration. I am yours.

_Iiiiiiiiiii…_

Oh. Oh please. No.

_Paaaarched…_

_Iiiiiiiiiii… _The laughter is rising in pitch, louder as it nears. And it is sharp but wet; an underlying gurgle. It does not say its name, but I know it is Regret. I do not want to die I want to live. Please do not do this to me. Please save me I do not want to know. Light, bring me peace. Sun, (_paaaaaarched_) save me or leave me to my (_iiiiiiii_) lunacy!

_Paaarched… Iiiiiiiii… Paaaarched… Iiiiii… Paaarched… Iiiiii _

And as they war for the possession of one hopeless, helplessly broken, mad and dying blood elf, the pauses between their spells become shorter. Their words of power blend together and my eyes tick back and forth and my hands burn and crack in a dozen places as I squeeze them into fists on my lap. The cracks are filled with red, but none of the blood spills. Perhaps it has all dried up.

I blink against the hair that clings to the corner of my eyeball and I know then that it is not dry because of "Parched" or tacky because of "Regret", though I am twisted and filled by both. I am dying because I have been a fool; an idiot. I have lived a life of greed and self-serving folly and now I will die a most inglorious death. I will die in the capital city of the race my people have a tentative alliance with that is only one of convenience.

I will die, unwatched and uncared for, in this dry, dusty and uninhabited corner of refuse and when my stink calls attention and my carcass is found, it will be buried in an unmarked grave or perhaps flung into the river or left on a boulder for the vultures to pick apart. And THAT will be RIGHT.

Parched and Regret continue to war it out and I remember what I am and my lips crack as I pull them down in a sneer of self-loathing.

It is better that I die here, unseen, than in Silvermoon, where I would have been hastily removed before I'd ever gotten this far. Hell, I doubt I'm even recognizable as a blood elf anymore. I have Parched to thank for that, though maybe Regret has had a hand in it. Moreso, it has been the work of Steel, Fists, Deception, and Backfired Plan. Maybe I should just thank myself. I lean my head back and the hiss and gurgling wheeze of my breath; my warring Gods, is interrupted by my laughter. It is a dry, "haaaaaah," that could be a scream as my jaw drops and my eyes roll up and close, though I can feel the corners of my mouth turn up and crack. It isn't a scream, though. It is nearly silent.

I used to be handsome. If they'd not taken my gold, along with my weapons and my immaculately tooled leather boots, I'd be willing to bet all of my gold that right now I am nearly as ugly as I have always been in my dealings. Very well, then, since I have no gold, I bet my life. My lips threaten to tear from my face as they stretch further at the irony of the thought. My laughter has become silent but continues. At least I still have my macabre sense of humor.

"He Bud, you alright?" The query issues in a low baritone, mere inches from my face. It is accompanied by the salty odor of cured ham and something else… fruit, I think. My hair is blasted out of my eyes by a very bovine snort. I have to lean my head forward to close my mouth, but it seems that my fit of silent hysterics have taken it all out of me. My head lolls to the side. Someone gasps. By the dry, dying sound of it, I'm sure it's me.

"Woah, there, Partner. What're ya drunk?" And then I'm being lifted, clumsily. A huge, fat palm with very hard fingers is cradling the back of my head. I can't open my eyes, but by the not-unpleasant, but very animal smell that hits me, I am sure that this is either a tauren or some unbeknownst to me variation on the upright farm animal. A similar hand, on the end of a long, bulging arm, fumbles me around roughly as it folds and turns me and then gathers me beneath the knees. I groan, gasp. Everything hurts.

He bounces, then. I can hear the sound of a pack and can almost picture a leather backpack jostling between massive shoulders. I roll and bump up his arms and crash into his rock-hard chest before falling into the crook of his arms as he shakes his shoulders and snorts. The stomping of his hooves shakes the earth, my head and my chest. He shakes every so often, roughly, and it is always followed by a blast of hot wind.

"Don't get no ideas, Bub." I'm drifting on a sea of boulders that yield as they tumble beneath me and rock and jostle me from side to side. They shake before he snorts and then I'm rolling again. "I ain't inta none a that funny stuff. Nope! Not big Brekk…" He keeps talking. Most of it has to do with ham and someone named Luanne. But I'm unsconscious.

* * *

Son of a ... You know, this was supposed to be a one-shot. It was supposed to take ten minutes, which is Wil-time is about a half-hour, give or take an hour. I don't know this elf. I don't even know his freaking name. I woke up from some random ass "picture unrelated" blood-and-guts dream that was so ridiculous that in the dream I was even like "aw C'moooon!"... And I hadn't even pissed yet when this belf starts mumblin in my ear about being thirsty and sand and then Big Brekk of all things. Well, he lied. He said it was a short story. A frigging one-shot. Stupid ass elf. This is why I don't make it a habit to roll belfs. They give me a hard time. Tauren cowboys with tiny hats are always so straightforward. They ain't into that funny stuff.

Oh well. I'm gonna go look at trolls on DA or something heh xD

~I'wilo


End file.
